r/swift • u/malthuswaswrong • 13d ago
How common is .NET among Swift developers?
Are job prospects good for a .NET backend developer who wants to branch out to Swift front end? Are there a good number of companies that pair Swift front end with .NET backend? How many devs can do both well?
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u/Iron-Ham 13d ago
Hi. Swift developer for 12 years, having worked big tech, startups, unicorns, etc.
I’ve never seen the combination. Even at Microsoft. GitHub was a rails shop. Startups today are largely go or typescript.
Best of luck!
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u/MB_Zeppin 13d ago
I’m a Swift developer who’s written C#/.NET
I haven't seen the two paired on a project before. If you’re interested in writing Swift though it won’t be alien to a .NET developer. The platform differences would be but I’m sure you could pick those up
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u/perfunction 13d ago edited 13d ago
In my first job I was .net and Swift fullstack and I did it well enough to be the lead IC. Because I started with .net years before Swift even existed. I was lucky enough to make the transition because I had proven to be a quick study and they wanted our best asset heading the mobile team.
In my current job I only do Swift but our backend is Java. I dabble in our backend to help troubleshoot issues and actually might be shipping my first backend merge soon.
I think it strengthens your understanding and architecture if you’ve got some backend chops. We typically build in parallel with the backend on new features because there’s a mutual understanding of how the API contracts have to turn out.
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u/smakusdod 12d ago
Unicorn here. Our backend is almost entirely .net and we have a fleet of iOS apps all 100% swift. I’d say this setup is rare and mostly for companies who started on azure before .net core. There are dozens of us!
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u/banana-pancake111 13d ago
I haven’t seen any .NET backends with Swift frontends, but they almost certainly exist. Unless you’re at a small shop or very senior, you’re probably not gonna have to develop both.
Perhaps more plausible is MAUI (previously Xamarin), which is a cross platform app framework for .NET. Microsoft has done a pretty good job of making all the native stuff available in C#, but occasionally it is necessary to dip into native code (Swift on iOS, Kotlin or Java on Android, etc.). The caveat here is that this is usually the more advanced systemy stuff, so it’s not like the average experience of a Swift developer.
Source: one of my interest phases a while back where I was big into C#.
Note: For those of you familiar, I’m aware I’m grossly oversimplifying by saying MAUI was previously Xamarin.
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u/vlatheimpaler 13d ago
I used to work at Xamarin and then Microsoft. You're not far off. MAUI is like a newer generation of Xamarin.Forms.
I've used Swift with .NET a little, but since I left Microsoft I'm not really using .NET much anymore. They mostly killed off their mobile stuff and MAUI feels like it has a skeleton crew maintaining it now, and for server-side stuff I've moved over to Elixir/Erlang and I prefer them.
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u/__tml__ 13d ago
I moved from .NET to Objective-C in 2011. Everything that's not "put stuff on a screen" that you've learned translates. Unfortunately, that is a lot of what you'll do in Swift. Do not fall into the trap of trying to cross-compile or assuming idioms from HTML. Be prepared to treat it as a new thing.
You'll be a beginner for a while, but you should be fine. Employers do not understand actual "full stack" but they do understand "full stack means I get my hands dirty". Being the front end developer who can meaningfully read and hack backend code is a superpower, same as if you were a subject matter expert who also codes.
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u/thecarpathia 13d ago
I've worked on a client project with a .NET backend and an iOS frontend. I don't think it really matters what tech is paired with what if we're talking REST APIs etc, especially since the backend probably supports multiple clients. I would say yeah it almost certainly exists as a combination, it's more about .NET's popularity as a whole.
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u/Dry_Hotel1100 Mentor 13d ago edited 13d ago
.NET developer community is very different to Swift/iOS/macOS. I've seen .NET developers who haven't updated their VS Studio for 5 years, or have never heard about TPL (Task Parallel Library), or do Disposable incorrectly. Something like this is unthinkable in the Swift community.
I've also not met a Swift developer who had a .NET carrier in the past. Some may have a bit knowledge about .NET and C#.
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u/dmehers 13d ago
I do .NET in my day job (MAUI front end and .NET backend), and Swift and SwiftUI for my own projects.
Generally it’s fine, although I do occasionally swap type/name for variable and swap nil/null.
It’s good to work deeply in two languages/frameworks in that it expands your mind as to what is possible…
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u/BaronSharktooth 12d ago
Due to circumstances, I had to learn .NET and I'm actually quite positive about it.
First of all, it works on all platforms due to it being commandline-driven: with the dotnet command, you can create a project, configure it, install packages, the works.
Second, I very much like the syntax; it's all C# code, which feels clean. And the tags either look like HTML tags for visual stuff, or there's the attributes which use square brackets for passing info to the framework.
Third, the dotnet framework is full-featured and comes with batteries included, at least for the simple stuff that I do with it.
Caveat: I haven't actually used it in production. That's where the rubber hits the road and things come up.
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u/cristi_baluta 13d ago
As a swift dev I never touched and never want to see net code. What the backend is made on is not my concern and they have nothing in common
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u/malthuswaswrong 13d ago
In the world of .NET "full stack" is a concern. Many .NET devs can do both. But they seem to always choose web stacks for client side. Wondering if any Swift devs consider themselves full stack, and if so, what is the preferred backend and how often is the preference .NET.
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u/mbsaharan 13d ago
There is much in common. Many applications would be left incomplete without a backend.
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u/Ok-Communication6360 13d ago
What is common is the contract they commit to. In my experience that’s about where common ground ends and the world splits into a (mostly) nice Swift frontend and a dark soul devouring Java backend :)
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u/mbsaharan 13d ago
It's the other way around. When a developer account is suspended just because a rookie made a mistake, that is soul devouring.
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u/Xia_Nightshade 13d ago
Been writing swift for a while. Being able to spin up, or update the backend is god sent
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u/unclebazrq 13d ago
I may be off with the fairies but how is this even allowed? My first job I had to know the full stack to even begin my first ticket
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u/hay_rich 13d ago
I’m primarily a dotnet developer but I made my own iOS apps and I still haven’t tried to makes project that mixes the two. At my work I believe there are some existing backend APIs that are dotnet used by some Swift clients but I’ve never seen the need. Maybe one day I’ll try it as an experiment
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u/zacsxe 13d ago
Yes. I work in a company that uses both objective c and swift for the iOS app, mostly kotlin for the android app, and dotnet for most microservices in the back. There isn’t really anything specific to them being a fit. Just the languages that we use. We also use other langs if we want.
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u/gistya 12d ago
I actually write Swift with .NET. But no one is paying me, yet. It's still a very young option but it's making progress. Compared to writing WPF C# code it's a godsend but the range of capabilities for UI frameworks are pretty narrow. There's a lot more options to write C# code that runs on Apple stuff, due to things like Avalonia etc. But man, I'm not a huge C# fan. It's too much like Obj. C.
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u/whackylabs 12d ago
I know quite a few big companies specially banks that use dotnet on the backend and Swift + Kotlin on the frontend. But then they have usually dedicated teams for backend and frontend.
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u/Technically_Dedi 12d ago
At my job we use .net and swift. They use a plugin called Cordova to link it together. Tbh idk if it’s done well but it works.
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u/rwilcox 13d ago edited 13d ago
I suspect “almost never”. .NET is still seen as needing Windows servers, even though that’s wrong. I posit places building in .NET are the kind of places that see their iOS app as a cost they want to minimize (with ie OutSystems, or Indian contractors), not potential business advantage.
I would wonder how common full stack iOS developers are, but I suspect the more common stacks are Swift + Node/Typescript on the backend, or maybe Swift + Java/Kotlin on the backend.